


Kiss Me, I’m (not) Irish

by Kangofu_CB



Series: MFD Prompts [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bar/Pub, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, M/M, St Paddy’s Day, meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-12-26 07:56:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18279041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangofu_CB/pseuds/Kangofu_CB
Summary: The only thing worse than bartending on St. Patrick’s Day (other than bartending on New Year’s Eve or Cinco De Mayo) is bartending on St. Patrick’s Day with Steve Rogers, Bucky’s best friend and partner in crime, who loves St. Paddy’s day with the burning fire of a thousand suns.Bucky hates every single thing about it, right up until he meets Purple Shirt With The Biceps.





	Kiss Me, I’m (not) Irish

**Author's Note:**

> For Mandatory Fun Day! IS SO FUN.

The only thing worse than bartending on St. Patrick’s Day (other than bartending on New Year’s Eve or Cinco De Mayo) was bartending on St. Patrick’s Day with _Steve_.

 

Not that Bucky didn’t love Steve.  He did. Steve was the brother Bucky had never had. They’d grown up together, had been best friends since second grade when Steve had punched a fifth grader for being mean to Bucky’s little sister and earned Bucky’s unending and undying affection for all eternity, along with a bloody nose.  It was hardly Steve’s first fight, and certainly not his last, but it was the one Bucky was most proud of him for. Becca had sworn for years that she was going to marry Steve, right up until Bucky’s mom had caught the two of them necking in Bucky’s room after school. _Then_ Becca’d claimed _Bucky_ was going to marry Steve.

 

She was _still_ claiming Bucky was going to marry Steve, actually, now Bucky thought of it, even though their experimental teenage days were long behind them and leaving him and Steve in the same room for more than ten minutes almost always resulted in a kind of childish, sibling-like rivalry that drove them to stupidity time and time again and would certainly be fatal in an actual relationship.

 

At the other end of the bar from Bucky, big, dumb, blond Steve was grinning from ear to ear as he slung bottles and glasses, peppered with smears of lipstick along his cheek and jaw and _enjoying_ himself in a way that made Bucky want to stab something.  

 

Steve and his stupid _KISS ME I’M IRISH_ shirt, which he wore totally unironically because his mother was from Dalkey and he had been _conceived_ in Ireland.  

 

The garish green string lights hung over the bar and the incessant and obviously fake Irish music playing over the speakers were not helping the situation.  Bucky himself had worn a plain black t-shirt and jeans, and his only concession to the so-called holiday were strings of plastic green beads and clovers around his neck.  Which, of course, Steve had ambushed him with at the beginning of his shift.

 

Bucky had served so much flat green beer that he was ready to tell the customers they were completely out.  Except Steve kept pouring it.

 

Bastard.

 

Bucky scowled harder.

 

Steve winked at him.

 

Bucky turned his back on Steve’s big, dumb face to serve the next ridiculously-clad customer of the evening.

 

He was pleasantly surprised to find a petite redheaded woman waiting patiently at the bar, as bored and unimpressed as Bucky himself felt.  Her only concession to the occasion was a long pendant on a gold chain with a green stone in it, classy enough that Bucky figured it had come out of her actual jewelry box.  

 

“What can I get you?” Bucky asked, shuffling dirty glasses from the bar to the sink as he spoke.

 

“Vodka soda,” she said, shooting him a kind of quiet smirk.  

 

“What, no green beer?” he asked, almost at the edge of teasing, even as he poured something that was slightly higher quality than well vodka over ice.

 

“I think I’ll pass,” she said sardonically.  

 

“Put it on my tab,” came an only-slightly slurred voice to her right, and Bucky turned to evaluate the speaker.  He was tall with sandy-brown hair and bedecked in what appeared to be the entire selection of Party City’s St. Paddy’s day aisle.

 

“I’ve got it,” the woman said, dismissing him with a flick of her eyes.

 

“You got a tab?” Bucky asked, ignoring the man as thoroughly as she had.

 

“C’mon honey, lemme buy you a drink,” Frat Bro insisted, pressing in closer to her space, and she huffed a sigh.

 

“Lady said she’s buyin’ her own drink,” Bucky said, raising his eyebrows.  

 

Before the guy could get entirely belligerent, a tall, broad-shouldered blond in a _purple_ shirt appeared out of the crowd, draping a well-developed bicep over her shoulders.

 

Frat Bro immediately made himself scarce.

 

Bucky turned a fierce gaze on Purple Shirt, but Redhead just sighed up at him with a kind of tolerant fondness that Bucky took to mean she knew him.

 

“I can take care of myself Clint,” she admonished, shrugging his arm off.

 

He released her easily, leaning his elbow on the bar instead and grinning.  “Yeah, sure, but maybe I need you to protect me. I’ve had my ass pinched so many times it’s gonna be bruised tomorrow.”

 

“I told you to wear green,” she responded.  “Not my fault you didn’t listen. Anyway, you like that sort of thing.”

 

“But purple’s my color!” he whined.  “And I like that sort of thing when it’s not underage girls.”

 

“Or girls at all,” she rolled her eyes.  “Put it under Barton,” Redhead told Bucky, and he nodded, and used the edge of the POS machine to cover the fact that he was checking Purple Shirt out.  

 

The man was something to look at, it was no wonder he was getting pinched left and right, and not just because he’d foregone the traditional holiday attire.  Besides being tall, and broad, and beefy, he was also blond and scruffy, with a smile so wide it crinkled his eyes, set in a handsome face and all of it trailing down to a slim waist.  The t-shirt was obviously well-worn, hugging all the right places.

 

And apparently he wasn’t into girls, which meant he was every bit Bucky’s type.

 

“You wanna drink?” Bucky asked, raising his eyebrows at Purple Shirt.  

 

“Beer?” the guy said, turning a hopeful look on Bucky.

 

Bucky sighed.  “Green?”

 

“Duh,” Purple Shirt - Clint, the redhead had called him Clint - said, still grinning.  “What’s the point otherwise?”

 

“The flavor?” Bucky tried, but he was already filling a pint glass with shitty beer.

 

Over his shoulder, Bucky could see a gaggle of giggling college-aged girls checking Clint out and whispering to one another, and he knew what was coming before it happened.  They egged each other on until one girl got pushed out of the group, and she darted forward and-

 

Yep.

 

She caught Clint right on the ass, judging by the way the guy jumped like he’d been shot.

 

“Jesus _fuck_ ,” the guy grumbled, reaching back to rub at his rear.  He turned a dirty look on the girls, and they scattered.

 

Redhead sighed.  “You brought it on yourself,” she reminded him again, and accepted both her glass and Clint’s when Bucky passed them over.

 

“You got a tab?” Bucky asked Clint, and that blazing blue gaze was back on his face.  

 

“What? Oh, yeah, it’s Barton.”  He jerked his thumb at Redhead.

 

Bucky gave Redhead a questioning look.  “It’s his tab,” she said, a satisfied smile stealing over her face. “He has to buy all my drinks tonight since he dragged me out.”

 

“Yeah but you aren’t holding up your end of the bargain Nat, you’re supposed to be protecting my virtue.”

 

“You don’t have any virtue,” she said, rolling her eyes.  “Now go away, I can take care of myself and you’re wrecking my vibe.”  She passed him the beer and sauntered off.

 

Bucky added both drinks to the tab, and turned to move to the next patron as Clint settled himself on the barstool she’d vacated.  

 

Behind Clint, another cluster of girls was getting brave, and Bucky felt a sense of momentary pity.

 

“Here,” he said, gruffly, dragging one of the plastic strands of beads from around his neck and tossing it to Clint, who caught it deftly mid-air.  Bucky got a blinding grin in return as Clint happily draped the beads around his neck and shot him a wink.

 

It was the same kind of friendly amusement that Steve had shot at him earlier, but Bucky had a decidedly different reaction to it.  

 

He moved on to the next customer, feeling Clint’s eyes on him the entire time.  

 

Bucky managed to mostly ignore him for a little while longer, until Clint’s beer glass got close to empty, and then Bucky made his way back to that end of the bar, pitcher in hand read to top him off.

 

Clint gave him a nod and watched as he poured the ridiculous concoction into his glass.

 

“How d’you make it green, anyways?” the blond man asked, idly.

 

“Food coloring.”

 

There was a thoughtful pause and Clint looped the string of beads around his finger and slid them back and forth, watching Bucky over the edge of his glass. Bucky jerked his head at the necklace Clint was toying with.  “Your ass any less abused now?”

 

“You protecting my virtue, Mister Tall Dark and Brooding Bartender?”

 

“Just your ass,” Bucky corrected him, before moving on down the bar.

 

He was several customers done and in the middle of mixing up a goddamn Irish car bomb before he noticed Clint had left the bar behind, a crumpled bill tucked under the glass at the back edge of the bar.  Bucky pocketed the money when he grabbed the glass, and tried to put tall, blond, and very handsome out of his mind.

 

Mostly it worked, even when Steve was getting catcalls near closing, his jeans riding low and his shirt riding high as stretched to reach a bottle of whisky, and even when Bucky himself got a pinch on the ass when he waded out from behind the bar to do a quick round-up of bar glasses because they were running low.  Eventually he forgot about the guy entirely, once a bar fight broke out near the pool table and the bouncers had to hustle a dozen patrons out of the building.

 

When he walked out though, at nearly three o’clock, a hulking, muscular shape was slouching against the brick of the building, huddled into a thin jacket.  Bucky’s eyes adjusted enough that he could make out spikey blond hair and the tell-tale purple before he got close enough to be tense about it, and Clint straightened up as Bucky got closer.  

 

“Figured I should give these back,” Clint offered, holding the beads out.

 

Bucky snorted.  “Keep ‘em, they suit you.  Wear ‘em next year.”

 

Clint held out the edge of his jacket, where a green button was barely legible in the dim streetlamp.

 

_Kiss Me, I’m (not) Irish_

 

Bucky huffed another laugh, inching in closer and hoping he was reading the situation right.

 

Clint met him halfway, tasting of cheap green beer and bar pretzels and Bucky decided maybe he didn’t hate St. Patrick’s Day quite as much as usual this year.  

**Author's Note:**

> Endless thanks to Clara for the beta read and her encouragement and patience with me. I love you <3


End file.
